Cast Your Ballot! Silmaril Awards 2021
It’s time to cast your ballot!
The nominations have been cast. The seconds have been seconded. And thirded… and fourthed… and some even eighteenthed!!! Shhhh, that’s not a word, but it’s still what happened.
And SEVENTY-EIGHT Silver-Tongued characters have descended upon my home for the past week! Seventy-eight!
I’m… whoa. Just a bit overwhelmed, still.
Thankfully, they mostly kept to themselves, which is good, as I had other company in town last week. But I have survived a plethora of poetry, and a few of them seemed intent on doing their best to talk everyone else into doing things they didn’t want to do…
But thankfully, silver-tongued characters seem to have a certain amount of immunity to that sort of persuasion… so none of our more nefarious silver-tongues managed to create an army or anything.
ehehe.
Ahem.
Some of these smooth-talking characters are downright terrifying. Do you have ANY idea the stress I’ve been under this week?
What with Jadis marching around and threatening to turn all the competition to stone (which would have made for a pretty difficult award ceremony later, let me tell you… and probably a legal nightmare), and Selia wanting everyone to call her a princess… even though we all know she’s just a pretender, Vizzini constantly scheming with everyone on how to kidnap someone, Fezzik’s rhymes (they’re fun in the book… they are NON-STOP in real life! Y’all… I’m starting to understand why Vizzini wanted him to cut it out), Eugenides stealing everything not nailed down, Keefe Sencen pranking literally everyone in existence, and Todd Crane and the Princess Bride narrator’s constant snark back and forth (and straight up making things up about history and trying to confuse everyone about what time period we’re currently in….) it’s been a struggle. (Yeah, I shouldn’t have probably put Todd and the PB Narrator in the same tent… in hindsight that was a bad plan). And then Lord Whitlock spent the entire time in a huff over only getting one vote.
Thankfully, Coren from Moonscript, Westley, and Nick Beasley were extremely helpful when it came to directing everyone into more productive ventures. The peacemaking influences of all the wonderful heroic silver tonges along with my own dear Kiernan Kane’s ability to lull the masses with his mandolin and beautiful voice, I had a good amount of crowd-controlling help.
They have mostly cleared out, now, in light of the fact that only 5 will be moving on to the voting round. A few are still hanging around, using their smooth words and clever wits to convince me that I miscounted somewhere or that we really ought to change our policies to allow the top six onto the voting form… or seven, or eight, or nine….
NO! The rules of the Silmaril Awards are already well-established. Just because we added an 11th blogger and a floating award category this year does NOT mean that all the rules are now up for review. You’ll just have to campaign better next year. I’m not even sure why you’re roaring at me, Malcolm, I KNOW I saw your name in the top five in another category.
Sorry about that. Hehe. Some of them are a bit touchy… it was a VERY close race for that final slot.
But you don’t want to listen to me ramble on forever. I wish I could highlight ALL the wonderful characters who were nominated and enthusiastically seconded, but there were 78 of them… and I don’t know all of them personally (yet). So… without further ado…. the VOTING FORM!
You’ll vote for ALL the categories in one handy-dandy place, as usual — so while you do not need to visit all the blogs to vote for all the characters, I would encourage you to please do try to get around to the other blogs this week. Some of these wonderful bloggers are having a far more difficult time with their houseguests (a few of them ARE hosting villains and dragons, after all) and they could probably use the encouragement, or a helping hand, if you’re able!
We’ll be kicking off the Award Ceremonies RIGHT HERE next Monday at 7am Central! Make sure you come back then to find out who won the Most Silver Tongued Silmaril… and for info on the schedule and order of ceremonies for the rest of the awards!
Who are you hoping wins this year? Do you have any characters you’re particularly rooting for?
(I gotta admit, I am hoping dear Fflewddur gets a silmaril this year)
Any new books make it onto your TBR already just based on the nomination round? I started reading the City Between series the other night… maaaaaay have stayed up a bit too late…..